People We Meet on Vacation

OCCASIONALLY, I SEE Alex Nilsen around on campus, but we don’t speak again until the day after freshman year ends.

It was my roommate, Bonnie, who set the whole thing up. When she told me she had a friend from southern Ohio looking for someone to carpool home with, it didn’t occur to me that it might be that same boy from Linfield I’d met at orientation.

Mostly because I’d managed to learn basically nothing about Bonnie in the last nine months of her stopping by the dorm to shower and change her clothes before heading back to her sister’s apartment. Frankly, I wasn’t sure how she even knew I was from Ohio.Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

I’d made friends with the other girls from my floor—ate with them, watched movies with them, went to parties with them—but Bonnie existed outside our all-freshman squad-of-necessity. The idea that her friend could be Alex-from-Linfield didn’t even cross my mind when she gave me his name and number to coordinate our meetup. But when I come downstairs to find him waiting by his station wagon at the agreed-upon time, it’s obvious from his steady, uncomfortable expression that he was expecting me.

He’s wearing the same shirt he had on the night I met him, or else he’s bought enough duplicates that he can wear them interchangeably. I call out across the street, “It’s you.”

He ducks his head, flushes. “Yep.” Without another word, he comes toward me and takes the hampers and one of the duffle bags from my arms, loading them into his back seat.

The first twenty-five minutes of our drive are awkward and silent. Worst of all, we barely make any progress through the crush of city traffic.

“Do you have an aux cable?” I ask, digging through the center console.

His eyes dart toward me, his mouth shaping into a grimace. “Why?”

“Because I want to see if I can jump rope while wearing a seat belt,” I huff, restacking the packets of sanitary wipes and hand sanitizers I’ve upended in my search. “Why do you think? So we can listen to music.”

Alex’s shoulders lift, like he’s a turtle retracting into his shell. “While we’re stuck in traffic?”

“Um,” I say. “Yes?”

His shoulders hitch higher. “There’s a lot going on right now.”

“We’re barely moving,” I point out.

“I know.” He winces. “But it’s hard to focus. And there’s all the honking, and—”

“Got it. No music.” I slump back in my seat, return to staring out the window. Alex makes a self-conscious throat-clearing sound, like he wants to say something.

I turn expectantly toward him. “Yes?”

“Would you mind . . . not doing that?” He tips his chin toward my window, and I realize I’m drumming my fingers against it. I draw my hands into my lap, then catch myself tapping my feet.

“I’m not used to silence!” I say, defensive, when he looks at me.

It’s the understatement of the century. I grew up in a house with three big dogs, a cat with the lungs of an opera singer, two brothers who played the trumpet, and parents who found the background noise of the Home Shopping Network “soothing.”

I’d adjusted to the quiet of my Bonnie-less dorm room quickly, but this—sitting in silence in traffic with someone I barely know—feels wrong.

“Shouldn’t we get to know each other or something?” I ask.

“I just need to focus on the road,” he says, the corners of his mouth tense.

“Fine.”

Alex sighs as, ahead, the source of the congestion appears: a fender bender. Both cars involved have already pulled onto the shoulder, but traffic’s still bottlenecking here.

“Of course,” he says, “people just slowing down to stare.” He pops open the center console and digs around until he finds the aux cable. “Here,” he says. “You pick.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Are you sure? You might regret it.”

His brow furrows. “Why would I regret it?”

I glance into the back seat of his faux-wood-sided station wagon. His stuff is neatly stacked in labeled boxes, mine piled in dirty laundry bags around it. The car is ancient yet spotless. Somehow it smells exactly like he does, a soft cedar-and-musk scent.

“You just seem like maybe you’re a fan of . . . control,” I point out. “And I’m not sure I have the kind of music you like. There’s no Chopin on this thing.”

The furrow of his brow deepens. His mouth twists into a frown. “Maybe I’m not as uptight as you think I am.”

“Really?” I say. “So you won’t mind if I put on Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’?”

“It’s May,” he says.

“I’ll consider my question answered,” I say.

“That’s unfair,” he says. “What kind of a barbarian listens to Christmas music in May?”

“And if it were November tenth,” I say, “what about then?”

Alex’s mouth presses closed. He tugs at the stick-straight hair at the crown of his head, and a rush of static leaves it floating even after his hand drops to the steering wheel. He really honors the whole ten-and-two wheel-hand-positioning thing, I’ve noticed, and despite being a massive sloucher when he’s standing, he has upheld his rigidly good posture as long as we’ve been in the car, shoulder tension notwithstanding.

“Fine,” he says. “I don’t like Christmas music. Don’t put that on, and we should be fine.”

I plug my phone in, turn on the stereo, and scroll to David Bowie’s “Young Americans.” Within seconds, he visibly grimaces.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing,” he insists.

“You just twitched like the marionette controlling you fell asleep.”

He squints at me. “What does that mean?”

“You hate this song,” I accuse.

“I do not,” he says unconvincingly.

“You hate David Bowie.”

“Not at all!” he says. “It’s not David Bowie.”

“Then what is it?” I demand.

An exhale hisses out of him. “Saxophone.”

“Saxophone,” I repeat.

“Yeah,” he says. “I just . . . really hate the saxophone. Any song with a saxophone on it is instantly ruined.”

“Someone should tell Kenny G,” I say.

“Name one song that was improved by a saxophone,” Alex challenges.

“I’ll have to consult the notepad where I keep track of every song that has saxophone.”

“No song,” he says.

“I bet you’re fun at parties,” I say.

“I’m fine at parties,” he says.

“Just not middle school band concerts,” I say.

He glances sidelong at me. “You’re really a saxophone apologist?”

“No, but I’m willing to pretend, if you’re not finished ranting. What else do you hate?”

“Nothing,” he says. “Just Christmas music and saxophone. And covers.”

“Covers?” I say. “Like . . . book covers?”

“Covers of songs,” he explains.

I burst out laughing. “You hate covers of songs?”

“Vehemently,” he says.

“Alex. That’s like saying you hate vegetables. It’s too vague. It makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense,” he insists. “If it’s a good cover, that sticks to the basic arrangement of the original song, it’s like, why? And if it sounds nothing like the original, then it’s like, why the hell?”

“Oh my god,” I say. “You’re such an old man screaming at the sky.”

He frowns at me. “Oh, and you just like everything?”

“Pretty much,” I say. “Yes, I tend to like things.”

“I like things too,” he says.

“Like what, model trains and biographies of Abraham Lincoln?” I guess.

“I certainly have no aversion to either,” he says. “Why, are those things you hate?”

“I told you,” I said. “I like things. I’m very easy to please.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning . . .” I think for a second. “Okay, so, growing up, Parker and Prince—my brothers—and I would ride our bikes up to the movie theater, without even checking what was playing.”

“You have a brother named Prince?” Alex asks, brow lifting.

“That’s not the point,” I say.

“Is it a nickname?” he says.

“No,” I answer. “He was named after Prince. Mom was a huge fan of Purple Rain.”

“And who’s Parker named after?”

“No one,” I answer. “They just liked the name. But again, not the point.”

“All your names start with P,” he says. “What are your parents’ names?”

“Wanda and Jimmy,” I say.

“So not P names,” Alex clarifies.

“No, not P names,” I say. “They just had Prince and then Parker, and I guess they were on a roll. But again, that’s not the point.”

“Sorry, go on,” Alex says.

“So we’d bike to the theater and we’d just each buy a ticket to something playing in the next half hour, and we’d all go see something different.”

Now his brow furrows. “Because?”

“That’s also not the point.”

“Well, I’m not going to just not ask why you’d go see a movie you didn’t even want to see, by yourself.”

I huff. “It was for a game.”

“A game?”

“Shark Jumping,” I explain hastily. “It was basically Two Truths and a Lie except we’d just take turns describing the movies we’d seen from start to finish, and if the movie jumped the shark at some point, just took a totally ridiculous turn, you were supposed to tell how it actually happened. But if it didn’t, you were supposed to lie about what happened. Then you had to guess if it was a real plot point or a made-up one, and if you guessed they were lying and you were right, you won five bucks.” It was more my brothers’ thing; they just let me tag along.

Alex stares at me for a second. My cheeks heat. I’m not sure why I told him about Shark Jumping. It’s the kind of Wright family tradition I don’t usually bother sharing with people who won’t get it, but I guess I have so little skin in this game that the idea of Alex Nilsen staring blankly at me or mocking my brothers’ favorite game doesn’t faze me.

“Anyway,” I go on, “that’s not the point. The point is, I was really bad at the game because I basically just like things. I will go anywhere a movie wants to take me, even if that is watching a spy in a fitted suit balance between two speedboats while he shoots at bad guys.”

Alex’s gaze flickers between the road and me a few more times.

“The Linfield Cineplex?” he says, either shocked or repulsed.

“Wow,” I say, “you’re really not keeping up with this story. Yes. The Linfield Cineplex.”

“The one where the theaters are always, like, mysteriously flooded?” he says, aghast. “The last time I went there, I hadn’t made it halfway down the aisle before I heard splashing.”

“Yes, but it’s cheap,” I said, “and I own rain boots.”

“We don’t even know what that liquid is, Poppy,” he says, grimacing. “You could have contracted a disease.”

I throw my arms out to my sides. “I’m alive, aren’t I?”

His eyes narrow. “What else?”

“What else . . .”

“. . . do you like?” he clarifies. “Besides seeing any movie, alone, in the swamp theater.”

“You don’t believe me?” I say.

“It’s not that,” he answers. “I’m just fascinated. Scientifically curious.”

“Fine. Lemme think.” I look out the window just as we’re passing an exit with a P.F. Chang’s. “Chain restaurants. Love the familiarity. Love that they’re the same everywhere, and that a lot of them have bottomless breadsticks—ooh!” I interrupt myself as it dawns on me. The thing I hate. “Running! I hate running. I got a C in gym class in high school because I ‘forgot’ my gym clothes at home so often.”

The corner of Alex’s mouth curves discreetly, and my cheeks heat.

“Go ahead. Mock me for getting a C in gym. I can tell you’re dying to.”

“It’s not that,” he says.

“Then what?”

His faint smile inches higher. “It’s just funny. I love running.”

“Seriously?” I cry. “You hate the very concept of cover songs yet love the feeling of your feet pounding against pavement and rattling your whole skeleton while your heart jackhammers in your chest and your lungs fight for breath?”

“If it’s any consolation,” he says quietly, his smile still mostly hidden in the corner of his mouth, “I hate when people call boats ‘she.’”

A laugh of surprise bursts out of me. “You know what,” I say, “I think I hate that too.”

“So it’s settled,” he says.

I nod. “It’s settled. The feminization of boats is hereby overturned.”

“Glad we got that taken care of,” he says.

“Yeah, it’s a load off. What should we eradicate next?”

“I have some ideas,” he says. “But tell me some of the other things you love.”

“Why, are you studying me?” I joke.

His ears tinge pink. “I’m fascinated to have met someone who’d wade through sewage to see a movie they’ve never heard of, so sue me.”

For the next two hours we trade our interests and disinterests like kids swapping baseball cards, all while my driving playlist cycles through on shuffle in the background. If there are any other saxophone-heavy songs, neither of us notices.

I tell him that I love watching videos of mismatched animal friendships.

He tells me he hates seeing both flip-flops and displays of affection in public. “Feet should be private,” he insists.

“You need help,” I tell him, but I can’t stop laughing, and even as he mines his strangely specific tastes for my amusement, that shade of humor keeps hiding in the corner of his mouth.

Like he knows he’s ridiculous.

Like he doesn’t mind at all that I’m delighted by his strangeness.

I admit that I hate both Linfield and khakis, because why not? We both already know the measure of things: we’re two people with no business spending any time together, let alone spending an extended amount of it crammed into a tiny car. We are two fundamentally incompatible people with absolutely no need to impress each other.

So I have no problem saying, “Khakis just make a person look like they’re both pantsless and void of a personality.”

“They’re durable, and they match everything,” Alex argues.

“You know, sometimes with clothes, it’s not a matter of whether something can be worn but whether it should be worn.”

Alex waves the thought away. “And as for Linfield,” he says, “what’s your problem with it? It’s a great place to grow up.”

This is a more complicated question with an answer I don’t feel like sharing, even with someone who’s going to drop me off in several hours and never think of me again.

“Linfield is the khakis of Midwestern cities,” I say.

“Comfortable,” he says, “durable.”

“Naked from the waist down.”

Alex tells me he hates themed parties. Leather cuff bracelets and pointy shoes with squared-off toes. When you show up somewhere and some friend or uncle makes the joke “They’ll let anyone in here!” When servers call him bud or boss or chief. Men who walk like they just got off a horse. Vests, on anyone, in any scenario. The moment when a group of people are taking pictures and someone says, “Should we do a silly one?”

“I love themed parties,” I tell him.

“Of course you do,” he says. “You’re good at them.”

I narrow my eyes at him, put my feet on the dashboard, then take them back down when I see the anxious creases at the corners of his mouth. “Are you stalking me, Alex?” I ask.

He shoots me a horrified look. “Why would you say something like that?”

His expression makes me cackle again. “Relax, I’m kidding. But how do you know I’m ‘good at’ themed parties? I’ve seen you at one party, and it was not themed.”

“It’s not about that,” he says. “You’re just . . . always sort of in costume.” He hurries to add, “I don’t mean in a bad way. You’re just always dressed pretty . . .”

“Amazing?” I supply.

“Confidently,” he says.

“What a surprisingly loaded compliment,” I say.

He sighs. “Are you misunderstanding me on purpose?”

“No,” I say, “I think that just comes naturally for us.”

“I just mean that for you, it seems like a themed party might as well just be a Tuesday. But for me, it means I stand in front of my closet for, like, two hours trying to figure out how to look like a dead celebrity out of my ten identical shirts and five identical pants.”

“You could try . . . not buying your clothes in bulk,” I suggest. “Or you can just wear your khakis and tell everyone you’re going as a flasher.”

He makes a repulsed grimace but otherwise ignores my comment.

“I hate the decision making of it all,” he says, waving the suggestion off. “And if I try to go buy a costume it’s even worse. I’m so overwhelmed by malls. There’s just too much. I don’t even know how to choose a store, let alone a rack. I have to buy all my clothes online, and once I find something I like, I’ll order five more of them right away.”

“Well, if you ever get invited to a themed party where you’re sure there will be no flip-flops, PDA, or sax and thus you’re able to attend,” I say, “I’d be happy to take you shopping.”

“Are you being serious?” His eyes flick from the road to me. It started getting dark out at some point without my noticing, and Joni Mitchell’s mournful voice is cooing out over the speakers now, her song “A Case of You.”

“Of course I’m serious,” I say. We might have nothing in common, but I’m starting to enjoy myself. All year I’ve felt like I had to be on my best behavior, like I was auditioning for new friendships, new identities, a new life.

But strangely, I feel none of that here. Plus . . . I love shopping.

“It’d be great,” I go on. “You’d be like my living Ken doll.” I lean forward and turn the volume up a bit. “Speaking of things I love: this song.”

“This is one of my karaoke songs,” Alex says.

I bust into a guffaw, but from his chagrined expression, I quickly gather that he’s not joking, which makes it even better.

“I’m not laughing at you,” I promise quickly. “I actually think it’s adorable.”

“Adorable?” I can’t tell if he’s confused or offended.

“No, I just mean . . .” I stop, roll the window down a little to let a breeze into the car. I pull my hair up off my sweaty neck and tuck it up between my head and the headrest. “You’re just . . .” I search for a way to explain it. “Not who I thought, I guess.”

His brow creases. “Who did you think I was?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Some guy from Linfield.”

“I am some guy from Linfield,” he says.

“Some guy from Linfield who sings ‘A Case of You’ at karaoke,” I correct him, then devolve into fresh, delighted laughter at the thought.

Alex smiles at the steering wheel, shaking his head. “And you’re some girl from Linfield who sings . . .” He thinks for a second. “‘Dancing Queen’ at karaoke?”

“Only time will tell,” I say. “I’ve never been to karaoke.”

“Seriously?” He looks over at me, broad, unfiltered surprise on his face.

“Aren’t most karaoke bars twenty-one and up?” I say.

“Not all bars card,” he says. “We should go. Sometime this summer.”

“Okay,” I say, as surprised by the invitation as by my accepting it. “That’d be fun.”

“Okay,” he says. “Cool.”

So now we have two sets of plans.

I guess that makes us friends. Sort of?

A car flies up behind us, pressing in close. Alex, seemingly unbothered, puts on his signal to move out of his way. Every time I’ve checked the speedometer, he’s been holding steady precisely at the speed limit, and that’s not about to change for one measly tailgater.

I should’ve guessed what a cautious driver he’d be. Then again, sometimes when you guess about people, you end up very wrong.

As the sticky, glare-streaked remains of Chicago shrink behind us and the thirsty fields of Indiana spring up on either side of us, my shuffling driving playlist moves nonsensically between Beyoncé and Neil Young and Sheryl Crow and LCD Soundsystem.

“You really do like everything,” Alex teases.

“Except running, Linfield, and khakis,” I say.

He keeps his window up, I keep mine down, my hair cycloning around my head as we fly over flat country roads, the wind so loud I can barely make out Alex’s pitchy rendition of Heart’s “Alone” until he gets to the soaring chorus and we belt it out together in horrendous matching falsettos, arms flying, faces contorted, and ancient station wagon speakers buzzing.

In that moment, he is so dramatic, so ardent, so absurd, it’s like I’m looking at an entirely separate person from the mild-mannered boy I met beneath the globe lights during O-Week.

Maybe, I think, Quiet Alex is like a coat that he puts on before he walks out the door.

Maybe this is Naked Alex.

Okay, I’ll think of a better name for it. The point is, I’m starting to like this one.

“What about traveling?” I ask in the lull between songs.

“What about it?” he says.

“Love or hate?”

His mouth presses into an even line as he considers. “Hard to say,” he replies. “I’ve never really been anywhere. Read about a lot of places, just haven’t seen any of them yet.”

“Me neither,” I say. “Not yet.”

He thinks for another moment. “Love,” he says. “I’m guessing love.”

“Yeah.” I nod. “Me too.”